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“I do.”
As they left Harry’s mouth, the words sounded so final. Like a nail in a coffin that nobody knew they were burying. He supposed, in a way, that was true.
The Harry Potter everybody knew had died with those words. Life as he knew it—as everybody knew it—was over.
Not that it mattered in the long run, he supposed. Harry’s opportunity at a normal, functional life had been over when his parents’ died. Given the way he’d been raised, he hadn’t exactly had the chance to nourish his caring and compassionate side.
Irritating people just made him feel stabby, which, according to most of the people he was around, probably wasn’t the most appropriate reaction to have.
Not that he ever expressed his feelings of stabbiness. He couldn’t imagine Dumbledore would react well to Harry asking him why he should be saving the arseholes in the Wizarding World, who’d done nothing but ostracise him at the slightest provocation.
Not to mention the fully grown adults, who couldn’t pick up their own wands to defend themselves or their families, but expected a teenager to save them all.
It was a shame, really, that the ‘light’ witches and wizards seemed to think that because they didn’t use dark magic, they could be weak and get away with it.
Either way, Harry was now married to the Dark Lord on the orders of the ‘light’ side, and wasn’t that just a trip?
They thought that he’d be able to temper Voldemort. That was quite the laugh. Harry was more inclined to don the pom-poms and come up with a chant to egg him on.
Still, he wouldn’t disabuse them of their notion just yet. Better to let them find out on their own.
It was more fun that way.
For Harry, at least.
…
Harry twisted his wedding ring around his finger absently. He was sprawled in his seat beside Voldemort on the slightly raised dais at the front of the room, one leg thrown over the arm of his pair as he paid little mind to the meeting that he’d been asked to attend.
The Death Eaters were all sending curious looks his way, as Voldemort outlined the raid that he was planning for that very night.
Harry figured that they were wondering why Harry wasn’t protesting, or pleading with him to save the children, or some such nonsense.
The truth was, Harry didn’t really give a toss.
An elf popped in, interrupting Lucius Malfoy mid-sentence, and Harry snorted at the affronted look on his face. Voldemort turned red eyes onto the elf.
“Pius Thicknesse be arriving with a repost, Master,” the elf squeaked.
Voldemort nodded. “Send him in.”
Oh, wonderful. A report meant that Harry was going to be stuck there for even longer, and he was already bored out of his mind.
The Death Eaters remained silent as the elf popped away again, and Lucius took his seat. Moments later, footsteps could be heard approaching the room, echoing slightly in the corridor.
The door opened to reveal Pius Thicknesse. The man looked like a particularly well groomed weasel, in Harry’s opinion. His hair was smoothed back with enough hair gel to provide for everyone at a Muggle prom, and Harry was quite sure that he’d never seen a man with better tended eyebrows.
None of that mattered when he opened his mouth, and Harry heard his voice. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and Harry visibly cringed.
And it clearly wasn’t just him. Voldemort’s already pale hands were so tight on the arms of his throne-like chair that they were practically translucent.
Harry managed a full five minutes before he cracked. He interrupted the prattling man with a raised hand. “Are you being so irritatingly verbose on purpose, or is this some kind of passive suicide that I don’t know about? Get to the point!”
Thicknesse blinked at him, and then opened his mouth to reply.
“Choose your next words very carefully, Pius,” Voldemort warned, visibly amused by Harry. “My husband has clearly outgrown his patience.”
Pius swallowed hard, fear suddenly clear in his eyes. Eventually, he said, “The Ministry has fallen apart, My Lord. It’s yours for the taking.”
“See, that wasn’t hard, was it? Harry said, rolling his eyes. He glanced at Voldemort. “Can something be done about his vocal cords? I’ll rip them out if I have to hear them too often, and that just doesn’t seem very polite.”
“There are potions,” Voldemort replied, shrugging lightly. He turned back to Pius. “I suggest that you look into them. You’re dismissed.”
Thicknesse bowed low and then turned to walk out of the room, moving as fast as he could without actively running. Harry watched him go, and then rolled his eyes at his own dramatics. He really could be quite mean; Voldemort was a terrible influence on him.
He was letting his thoughts out more and more lately. Usually, he’d only daydream about ripping someone’s vocal cords out, he wouldn’t actually give into the temptation to say it.
“My Lord?” Lucius asked, the hesitation clear in his voice. “Will your husband be joining us on the raid tonight?”
Voldemort glanced at Harry, and then titled his head curiously. “ Will you be joining us?”
Harry thought about it for a second, and then nodded his head. “Sure. It’ll be nice to set a few fires.”
Voldemort snorted. “The light has no idea what their ‘saviour’ is really like, do they?”
“Pretty sure they’d have locked me away in a dungeon, shackled to a wall, if they knew—and not even in the kinky way.”
There was a pause, and then Voldemort’s lips tilted up. “Perhaps we’ll have to try that out, beloved. In the kinky way, of course.”
Harry grinned. “As my Lord wishes.”
…
The knife sailed through the air and landed exactly where it had been targeted. Red lined the edge of it around the wound it had created, and Harry summoned it back with a mere wave of his hand, as he used his wand to cast an overpowered Incendio on a nearby building.
He really did like fire; it was just so pretty.
He could see Voldemort a little ways down the street, his own wand firing spell after spell at the Muggles who were trying to run, clearly confused and terrified of what was happening.
The few wizards that lived in the area had already either died, or scarpered, the cowards.
Harry set a few more of the nearby houses on fire—just because he could—before he let his knives sail through the air again. While most of the Death Eaters seemed to prefer curses to torture their victims, Harry couldn’t help but think that the more hands on approach was more… personal.
He liked that, too.
Though, of course, that didn’t mean that he didn’t also like to use magic on his victims. An Entrail Expelling curse hit an overweight man in the gut as he tried to sneak into the car parked on his driveway.
Harry snorted. Did he think that he was going to be able to run them all over and escape?
Idiot.
“That’s disgusting!” he heard from beside him, and he turned to see Lucius Malfoy—face hidden behind a black and silver mask, but that hair was unmistakable—watching as the man’s large intestine was literally vomited up through his mouth.
“Have you never been interested in biology?” Harry asked, as he moved his wand in a large, overarching C pattern, towards a woman who screamed as she was literally ripped in half. “I like to see how the insides of people work.”
“Potter, you’re insane,” Lucius muttered, shaking his head. “How the light thought that you were theirs, I’ll never understand.”
“I’ve got an honest face,” Harry said, shrugging.
They worked together to blow up three cars and a house, and shared a smirk.
“They should really look deeper than the expressions on one’s face, if they believed your facade.”
Harry winked. “I know.”
They separated to hit the end two houses on the block, herding the remaining Muggles in the area towards the other Death Eaters. Harry found a couple of stragglers, and killed them quickly.
Time was ticking, and he knew that Voldemort hadn’t particularly wanted to deal with the Order of the Phoenix. He’d wanted to prove that they couldn’t be reached in time to stop the damage that the Death Eaters could do.
Harry glanced over his shoulder, and grinned at the destruction they’d left behind them. The houses still burned brightly, and the ground was covered in patches of deep red, the blood of Muggles staining it beautifully.
Turning to catch his husband’s eye, Harry smiled at him as he used the spell that was the same shade of green as Harry’s eyes.
After his last killing curse, he raised his wand to the sky and cast ‘ Morsmordre’. As one, the Death Eaters Apparated from the scene, just seconds before Harry and Voldemort did the same, leaving behind only chaos, destruction, and death.
A successful evening, it was.
…
Harry let his fingers fly over the ivory keys of the piano, the melody he played familiar and soothing to him.
He had a bit of a day—including a meeting with Dumbledore, in which the man had been disappointed in Harry for not stopping the raid earlier in the week; Harry had wanted to make his eyes pop out from his skull—and he wasn’t in the mood for interruptions.
Which was why, when a knock on the door sounded followed by the door opening, he was about ready to murder whoever it was.
“My Lord, the—”
“Did I tell you to come in?” Harry asked, not even bothering to turn his head to see who it was.
“No, but—”
“If you knock on a door, and there’s no answer, do you walk in?” he turned to see Goyle Sr looking at him, his eyes wide. “Or, do you assume that whoever is inside is busy?”
“I heard you playing,” Goyle pointed out, rather stupidly.
Harry closed his eyes. “You’re an imbecile.”
“I don’t know what that means, but, uh, I’m sorry?”
“What do you want, Goyle?”
Goyle shifted his feet. “The Dark Lord asked me to tell you that dinner is being served, My Lord.”
“Tell him that I’m not hungry,” Harry replied, his lips twisting into a grimace.
“But, My Lord—”
“Go away, Goyle. My fingers are twitching, and if you don’t let them play the piano, they’re going to start playing with knives. ”
The door closed a few seconds later, and Harry turned his attention back to the piano, but the mood for it had left him. He dropped his head onto the keys with a groan.
A few minutes later, the door opened again, and strong, long fingers pressed into his shoulders, the palms of two hands pressing into his back.
“Are you quite alright, beloved?”
“Meh,” Harry muttered. “Today has been the worst, and I don’t want to deal with people.”
“The minions seem to be quite concerned about you,” Voldemort murmured. “Some more than others. Bella offered to come and cheer you up, but we only just redecorated in here, so I thought better of it.”
Harry chuckled. “Bella’s idea of cheering me up makes some sense though.” He leant back against the taller man, his head resting against a strong chest. “Come and spar with me for a while?”
Voldemort leant down and pressed a kiss to his head. “Of course.”
…
Harry stood by the doors of the manor, a coffee cup in his hand, watching the storm. He loved thunder and lightning, he always had. There was something so infinitely soothing about a storm.
“Rabastan has gotten himself into a sticky situation, My Lord,” Lucius said, joining him at the door. “He’s hoping you’ll give him a hand.”
“Don’t tell me that he provoked Bella and Rod again,” Harry groaned. “I’m enjoying my coffee, dammit.”
“You could always leave him to her mercy,” Lucius suggested, with a wry smile.
“Don’t tempt me.”
He finished the remaining coffee, and banished the cup, casting a longing look at the storm before he followed Lucius through the base, to where Bellatrix had Rabastan cornered. Rodolphus sat on a desk nearby, watching with amused eyes.
It didn’t take long for Harry to realise why he seemed to be so amused. Rabastan’s usually brown hair was bright orange, and he was sneezing uncontrollably while Bella cackled.
Harry snorted. “Why was I needed for this?”
Lucius was staring at the scene, clearly completely baffled. “I… I thought that this was going in an entirely different direction, My Lord.”
Laughing now, Harry shook his head. “How is this my life?”
And the thing was, as more of the Death Eaters were drawn in by Harry and Bellatrix’s laughter, Harry realised that this was his life now, and he didn’t hate it.
Later, he’d go and find his husband, and probably have kinky sex. Or there would be a raid, and he’d get to play with his knives. And tomorrow, something else would happen. And the day after, something different again.
He was certainly no longer bored, and he was definitely not pretending to be someone that he wasn’t.
Actually, he thought, saying ‘I do’ on the orders of the light was probably the best thing he could have ever done.
Not that they’d agree.
Hey, you can’t please everyone, right?
But he was certainly pleasing himself.